D. H. Green tells his audience in the introduction to Women Readers in the Middle Ages that the book is written by a Germanist, even though it is surveying women's reading practices (and representations of these practices) in France and England, in addition to Germany. This information is valuable and sheds light on the approach taken throughout the book, which has more of a philological outlook than a theoretical one. A survey of the primary medieval texts cited and discussed in the book yields more German than any other language, but French and English texts are still well represented.

The book is divided into two parts, and each part has two subcategories. Part 1, “Reading in the Middle Ages,” is a broad look at reading practices in the Middle Ages (here, both genders are included). This section is divided between “Literal Reading” and “Figurative Reading.” Part 2, “Women and Reading in the Middle Ages,” narrows its focus to women, primarily “real” women (whereas pt. 1 included many fictional scenes of reading). It is divided between “Categories of Women Readers” and “Women's Engagement with Literature.”

The first section of part 1 goes over what will be familiar ground to scholars of lay literacy or literature. Green looks at various ways in which reading is depicted or described in medieval literature and devotional texts. He divides this into four main categories: reading to oneself, reading to others, reading involved in writing, and reading in Latin and the vernacular. He uses fictional examples (of Criseyde reading in Troilus and Criseyde, of Jankyn in The Wife of Bath's Prologue, and of Guinevere in Parzival) as well as historical texts—mainly devotional ones—and the cues given to readers; for example, he uses Margery Kempe to talk about how she knew many important devotional texts because they had been read to her but also the reading practices of the Carthusian who annotated the manuscript in which the book of Kempe survives.

The second section challenges the notion of what “reading” means and the ways it can be used in the Middle Ages. Again drawing on both fictional and nonfictional texts, Green looks at how reading can expand beyond the text, such as in “reading” the body of Christ during his Passion or reading the image of a picture, and also how reading can extend beyond a physically sighted activity, that is, something located in the heart or mind, as well as the relationship between rote recitation and literacy (related to the ideas of Latinate and vernacular literary expounded in the first section of pt. 1). Because Green interprets the act of reading so broadly here, it seems that he does not cover any of these interesting points or ideas in great depth. Part 1 is not focused on women but does make up about one-third of the book.

Green begins part 2 with the statement that for some readers the title of the book could be a contradiction in terms; I would be surprised if that is true. Although he cites and uses most of the current research on women's literary and reading in the Middle Ages (such as recent work by Mary Erler and Jocelyn Wogan-Browne), he does not exactly acknowledge the enormous amount of work that has been in done in the past decade or so that addresses this issue. While Green's book is a notable contribution to this field of study, it is not terrifically groundbreaking in its approach. Its value is in the scope of texts that Green looks at, as well as the various ways in which reading can be interpreted by both medieval readers and modern critics.

In part 2 Green looks at some of the various definitions of reading and readership outlined in part 1 and outlines some of the ways in which literacy (both reading and writing) generally and books specifically were transferred to and between women. Part of Green's justification for the broad use of the term “reading” is that medieval authors are themselves not clear on what the term means and how it is being used. (Are the women reading the texts themselves? Are they being read to? Are they simply reciting?) In the section entitled “Categories of Women Readers,” Green gives a general survey of evidence of laywomen, nuns, recluses, semireligious women, and “heretics” (in which category he looks at Lollardy, as well as accusations against Margery Kempe and Mechthild von Magdeburg). He also looks at some centers of women's reading, particularly convents, such as Barking, Syon, and Helfta.

The book closes with a further broadening of the scope of the book to include women's “engagement” with literature, which Green defines as women who are scribes, authors, patrons, or the dedicatee of a text. This section predictably includes Hildegard von Bingen, Marie de France, and Christine de Pisan, but some of the scribes and patrons are less known, and Green does a nice job of describing what kinds of work they copied and championed. As with the other sections, many works and women are discussed and brought into dialogue with each other.

I found myself wanting the book to focus on one of the many areas that Green covers: fictional characters, “real” women readers, or other ways of reading. My own interest lies with devotional literature, which was consistently returned to throughout the book, but here, too, I felt like it deserved more attention than it got. While Green has delivered a very astute, encompassing look at reading in the Middle Ages and then looks more closely at women's reading in the Middle Ages, this is a book that ultimately delivers more breadth than depth. Perhaps Green's forthcoming companion volume, Gendered Reading around 1200, will offer the kind of depth this book lacks. Green does call the book, in his introduction, a “survey,” and in many ways that is what the book is, although it gestures toward something more and certainly offers up that potential.